Pileus 3-6 x 2-4 mm when still closed, 6-12 mm when expanded, ovoid to ellipsoid, turning applanate at maturity or even revolute at deliquescence; cuticle whitish in early stages, later on greyish with pale ochre to brown disc, slightly grooved up to centre, fully covered with a fibrous-woolly, snow-white veil, which appears crowded at the disc but at the periphery split up in separate fibrils, which are slightly upturned at their ends. Lamellae, L = 14-22, l = 0-3, ascending, free, narrow, rather crowded, white in the early stages, later blackening, with pale edge. Stipe 20-60 x 0.8-1.2 mm, cylindrical-filiform, often wavy, neither tapering towards the apex nor bulbous, slightly narrowed near the base but without a true pseudorhiza, snow-white, at first covered with many veil fibrils, later on smooth. Context inconspicuous, devoid of particular smell and taste.
  Spores [120,4,2] 7.3-10.7 x 4.8-7.2 µm; Q = 1.25-1.75; av. Q = 1.45-1.55; av. L = 8.7-9.6 µm, av. B = 5.8-6.5 µm, ellipsoid or ovoid, exceptionally subcylindrical in frontal view, sometimes slightly flattened at one side in side view, rounded at the base and apex, smooth, dark reddish brown in water, with central, 1.3-1.5 µm wide germ pore. Basidia 18-34 x 7-10 µm, 4-spored, trimorphous: 1) claviform, 2) spheropedunculate and 3) subcylindrical with a distinct median narrowing (the longest ones). Each basidium surrounded by (3-)4-5(-6) pseudoparaphyses. Pleurocystidia 40-90 x 18-30 µm, ellipsoid, ovoid, oblong, (sub)utriform or subcylindric, with short basal peduncle. Cheilocystidia 22-70 x 17-30 µm, abundant, (sub)globous, ovoid, ellipsoid, oblong or (sub)utriform, with short basal peduncle. Pileipellis a cutis, made up of cylindrical, ellipsoid or subglobose, parallel , 10-60 long and 10-25 µm wide elements. Veil made up of two kinds of hyphoid elements: the former in hardly separable chains of cylindrical, ellipsoid or even subglobous elements, mainly thin-walled and hyalin, sometimes slightly thick-walled, walls up to 0.5 µm wide, in part rather strong yellowish encrusted, 25-150(-250) x 15-45(-60) µm, not diverticulate, very rarely branched, with subglobose, ellipsoid, subcylindrical or fusoid terminal elements; the other kind of veil made up of much narrower, 2-10(-15) µm wide elements, not in chains, easily separable from each other, thin-walled, densely diverticulate, with up to 10 µm long, finger-like diverticula, some or sometimes many elements very short and (sub)globous. Veil on stem particularly made up of these diverticulate hyphae, diverticula sometimes branched and up to 17 µm long, but also remnants of 'Lanatuli'-veil is often present. Clamp-connections absent.

Habitat & distribution

  On pure dung of deer and sheep, solitary or subfasciculate. Very rare. Only known from one locality in Italy and one in the Netherlands.

Remarks

  The two kinds of veil elements, the small basidiocarps, the habitat on dung, the rather broad spores with an average quotient of 1.45-155 and the absence of clamp-connections are characters to recognize Coprinus candidolanatus. Other dung-habitat species with spores up to c. 11 µm long are C. pseudoradiatus and C. cinereus. Coprinus pseudoradiatus have narrower spores with an average quotient >1.6, Coprinus cinereus have larger basidiocarps and, moreover, both of these species have clamp-connection and only one kind of veil: chains of sausage-like, not diverticulate elements.